


Shag Rugs: A Monstrous Tryst, and Metamorphosis in The Bauer Home

by SammySammy



Category: Cryptid - Fandom, Mothman - Fandom, OC - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Smut, bug-loving boy and his bug-husband, but this is a trash-ship that started as a joke and I've started to love it genuinely, it'll get to being smut eventually, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 18:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10519470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammySammy/pseuds/SammySammy
Summary: So I had this ship with one of my OCs (Ruben) that started as a joke, but I progressively got more into it. He loves bugs, so what if bugs loved him?! Eh?! Mothman! At the behest of a couple friends who proofread and gave me notes, I wrote this thing. It's fluff, mostly for me, but I hope y'all like it. If you have any constructive critiques, or compliments (both are loved, 'cause I am a worrisome nerd that wants to improve) then please leave 'em in the comments, or PMs if this site has those. http://i.imgur.com/dUTYjJr.png





	

Ruben Bauer sits on the edge of his bed, with a small, glass tank held between his bare legs. He hums a soft song to himself, and flicks the lights off, turning the room blue with moonlight. He reaches towards his nightstand to pluck up a red maple twig – which still bends under the weight of its own leaves – and then he lowers it into the glass tank, setting it aside a small, green caterpillar. Dryocampa rubicunda, rosy maple moth, due to cocoon anytime now. Ruben has been waiting till his bug – which he has named “Mini-Ruben” - begins its change into a fluff of pink and yellow. Ruben peers at his squishy roommate, and sprouts a curt, shining smile that dimples his soft cheeks. This will be his fourteenth moth, seventeenth insect, and twentieth bug, but rosy maple moths have always been his favorite. He envies the poof and the colors, and hopes to be as beautiful in some regard. Now, he is fat enough to jiggle, he dresses rather plainly, and his hair – though naturally soft – sits as a tussled, brunet mess on his head. Sometimes he considers identifying as a woman, he has no ties to being a he, nor any qualms with being a she. He wouldn't mind owning up to his round body and slight breasts, though that would take some guts that he does not have. Maybe when his career as an entomologist has steadied, when he's older, maybe he'll have the confidence to work on himself. He avoids thinking about that now, as it is an issue for his future-self to ponder on, has been for years. He brings the tank up, kisses the side of the glass so that his bug will have sweet dreams, then places it on the sill of the bay-window over his bed. Mini-Ruben squirms itself against the root of a false tree in its enclosure, while Standard-Size Ruben begins to dream about running his fingers through shag rugs. 

Despite the cool, fall air seeping in through the ajar window, and Ruben's lack of clothing, the boy tosses and turns and sweats. The shag carpet in his dreams turns to a mess of deep and knotted curls, ensnaring his digits in muted colors. His bug wraps itself in a cocoon. Ruben wants that safety. He kicks the blankets off of him, and lies bare on his narrow mattress. The cold air sticks to him. Outside, the air seems staggered, whistling in pulses through the crack in the window; the rhythm of the wind deteriorates as it grows stronger, and then stops altogether for several seconds. This is when Ruben realizes he's awake, unable to maintain steady sleep, slobber pooling beneath the left side of his face. The night is restless. Ruben is not superstitious, but he is skittish enough to be concerned anyway. 

As the boy collects himself, a wad of the darkness outside splits off and smashes against the window overhead. This is enough of a jolt to send Ruben springing from his bed, tumbling over the floor, and smashing against the door to his closet. The cut of midnight knocks open the window, and urgently inches itself into the room, all while that erratic beating of air returns. Ruben stares with a pale face, open eyes, and a squeal dripping from his parted lips. As the oddity bleeds into the green-walled room, its shape becomes discernible: layered portions of round fur, thin and angular limbs, and two large and red eyes. It trips through the window, lands on the bed, and outstretches violet wings that touch from one end of the room to the other; the beating of wind stops as the monster's wings stop. Across its broad torso, several patches of fluff are missing, revealing scraped and dented chitin, matching the slew of blemishes across its wings. 

Ruben screams. The creature skitters off of the bed and takes up a corner of the room, and Ruben crawls into the opposite corner, while going silent. They stare at each other for a long time, examining each other, collecting themselves, each is too frazzled to notice the other's shock. Ruben eyes over the creature across from him, and notes several peculiarities: seven feet tall, well-above the human's small stature, at least by two feet; a pair of purple, frilly antennae; a head that tapers down-and-forwards to a rounded point, from which a proboscis swirls; and a triangular torso, topped with broad shoulders, based on narrow hips. In-turn, the creature's kaleidoscopic vision shows him both the small, fat human, and the contents of the room: several glass tanks with insects in them, tidied floors, an abundance of green, and a slew of books on moths atop a desk cluttered with the necessary supplies for raising and maintaining the beautiful insects. 

The creature once again chirps its forearms, and gestures with tapered fingers towards the desk and its adornments. It crawls back over the bed, still pointing. This is what it came here for. It saw the boy and his insects, that careful attention and love shone through the bay window while the monster was busy falling and flailing through the night sky. The creature kneels low, putting both knees to the floor before lowering his chest as well; he prostrates, makes himself look weak, and gestures again at the table. 

Ruben wipes tears from his own face, and looks over the intruder's body; antennae, fur, wings, chitin, thin limbs... 

“Uhm... y-you hungry?” Ruben whimpers out. The monster shakes its head. “Cold?” The monster shakes its head, hesitantly this time, then nods down to its own body. “Oh.” Ruben says, while grabbing a pair of sweatpants from his laundry basket, and squeezing into them. “You're hurt.” The monster nods frantically, then sits up on its knees, just to flash its damaged chest again. 

Ruben leans forwards, and eases himself closer to the daunting bug, moving on his hands and knees. Ruben reaches out to a drawer, and pulls out a stout bottle of some liquid putty, meant for repairing small cracks in shells; there isn't enough of the salve to properly seal the creature's wounds, but Ruben identifies the most severe and amendable. He brings the bottle up towards the scrapes over the monster's chest, and lays thin streaks of putty in the trenches, while his other hand uses a paper towel to smooth things over. The putty hardens and fills the cracks in the chitin, but it still requires some time to set. The creature doesn't make much noise, but it does visibly shudder, and scrapes along the ground beneath it. Ruben works on another patch, then another, then another, until his bottle of salve is emptied and he has scraped all he can from the inside. 

“Okay, just... stand still, alright?” Ruben advises, while putting his trembling hands out in front of him; by now he knows that the creature can understand him, but he still uses all the gestures and mannerisms that he uses for animals, due to how mute and feral his patient is. “I'm going to go get a bandage. Just... well, yeah, stay here. Don't move.” he says, his voice growing softer and softer. The boy keeps his arms outstretched, and rolls from his knees to his feet, just to stand up without dropping his guard. The fluff-cloaked beast nods and sits on the ground, its bony hands hovering over the mended wounds on its chest. 

Ruben walks backwards out of his room, then sprints into the kitchen, just to retrieve some medical bandage from the first-aid kit atop the fridge. He stops for a moment and gawks at the door outside; he could leave, run to his friend's house, get himself to safety; he could leave the writhing bug in his apartment, alone, untreated, curious as to where its care had gone-- curious at first, then scared, when its uncovered mending starts to gather grime and infect the wound beneath. Ruben thinks, and wrenches the roll of bandaging in his hands. 

The crumpled creature jolts up as Ruben bursts into the room, but the human is quick to calm it, once again gesturing with both arms outstretched. The beast is quick to settle down. Its chest hurts to much to be active. Ruben stoops in close and brings his hands – which no longer shake – to each of the monster's underarms and urges the limps up; the monster obliges, and exposes the whole of his torso. Ruben places the end of the bandage wrap on the far-right of his patient's body, holds it with one thumb, then uses the other hand to pass the wrap around the creature's body. He does this several times, while leaning forwards and closing his eyes to try and stifle the innate terror of being body-to-body with something so bizarre. The bandaging only takes a few seconds, but by the end, Ruben is trembling again, and he fumbles several attempts to safety-pin the bandaging closed and taut. The creature lowers its arms slowly. Ruben falls onto his back. 

A few minutes pass, and the two simply stare at each other the whole time. As moments pass, they both grow less tensed, then their stares wandering away from each other, glancing across their bodies, the room around them, the open window, the bird now sitting on the sill. Ruben blinks, then he blinks again, again, longer than the last-- before he knows it, he's asleep. He wakes in a violent stir when the beast prods at his foot. Ruben is collected enough to finally think about his surroundings now. He assumes this is a long, intricate dream, and soon enough he'll wake up to the sun shining on his face. He will enjoy his day off with a movie, take-out, then bedtime with two fingers and a bottle of durex lubricant. He begins to doze off again, but hurriedly scampers up onto his feet; hopefully, standing upright will keep him from passing out.

“Well? You-- uh...” he pauses, then points to the window. The creature unfurls its wings, once-again revealing the marks and tears. Ruben nods, and rubs his hair back. “Okay.” he says, quietly, mulling over what to do. He couldn't kick it out, it's hurt and vulnerable... and much bigger than him. Ruben walks around the monster, maintaining a safe distance between them on his way to the bed. “You can sleep in here.” he says, while reaching down to scoop up a single pillow, and the blankets he'd tossed away earlier. “Just... y'know, sleeeep oooon theee bed.” he mumbles out, while – again – side-stepping around the treated patient, and out the bedroom door. Ruben pokes his head through the door, “Sleep well.” and then closes it. 

Ruben locks the bathroom door from the inside, wraps himself in a blanket, then lies down with his pillow in the tub. He's terrified, and the cold ceramics on all sides don't help; despite his scared and chilled shivering, Ruben eventually drifts to sleep from sheer exhaustion. He dreams of dragging his fingers through shag rugs. Mothman dreams of rubbing his talons along a mound of dough.


End file.
